IRVINE : Medical Center at UCI Urged Again
A special committee is set to propose construction of an on-campus medical facility at UC Irvine, the latest salvo in a longstanding debate over the idea.
Members of the committee who studied the issue at the request of the Academic Senate said the facility is essential to the future of the College of Medicine, according to Edward Arquilla, a professor of pathology and chairman of the committee that developed the one-page proposal.
“We feel that unless we have something on this campus, this medical school is going to be strapped as far as academic growth,” Arquilla said, noting that professors are angry about the inconvenience involved in commuting between the campus in Irvine and the UCI Medical Center in Orange.
“It’s getting worse,” Arquilla said of the traffic. “It used to take me 15 to 20 minutes (to get to the medical center). Now it’s 45 minutes.”
The Academic Senate’s Executive Committee has already unanimously endorsed the special committee’s report, and an assembly of the medical school approved it Feb. 14.
The report, which includes few details, is expected to be considered by the voting members of the Academic Senate on Thursday.
The special committee asked that “the highest priority be given to the planning and implementation of the On-Campus Center for the Health Sciences in the 10-year academic plan being formulated by the College of Medicine.”
Leon Schwartz, UCI’s vice chancellor of administrative and business services, said: “The idea here is to have a center where you would have the basic research taking place in close proximity to clinical facilities . . . a quick exchange from research to bedside.”
Committee members shied away from calling the new facility a hospital, an idea the faculty has endorsed before and one that has been vehemently opposed by the community. There were concerns in the past that a new medical facility would not be community-oriented at a time when health-care options for the poor were limited.
But Schwartz said the center won’t be a traditional hospital with an emergency room that largely dictates the activity of the staff. Instead, the so-called On-Campus Center for the Health Sciences will focus on particular studies in medicine, such as neurosciences.
Under such a plan, patients with Alzheimer’s disease would more likely be treated than a patient needing heart surgery, Schwartz said.
The idea behind an on-campus medical facility has refused to die, despite opposition by the community and a 1983 order by the UC Board of Regents to drop the plan. The board would ultimately have to approve plans for the campus center before it could be built.
Schwartz said he hopes this time the facility will receive a favorable reception.
“I think that it will get a great deal of support,” he said. “The difficulty will be getting the funding to bring all this together.”
